Down with abusive farming - mix it up A-net

First things first, drok troll cave = no longer. In a fierce and raging battle the Drok trolls were beaten..the Avicara in there swarming numbers have taken over the cave ..it is theres and there's it shall be. (that takes care of 75% of Chinese gold farmers.

Next

Damn those Rockshots they get everywhere feasting on Lovley Minotaur meat they have indeed taken over elona Holy Crap bands Batman no more mindless monks farming there either, maybe they'll help in missions now!

Next

Holy cow!! instead of necro pop-ups in early UW they're now Monk pop-ups..Smite hex u say? goodness no ss ftl i guess.

Next

Wow those sorrows furnace baddies really got buff Shatter HEX AGAIN AHAH NO WTF IS GOING ON "t3h 9am3 is teh brok3n, my ss does not clear al areas alone in its uberness anymore i am teh uber failure".

sorry.i just want valuable items dropped as usuall again, farming stopped that so Anti farming can fix it - dont say it can't, it can and thats that.!

Full mixed balanced teams ftw! PVE Players -Venturing - Enroute to having a good time playing in mixed fun groups for the sake of saving the pve way of life. Rant over im sorry all. GW i love u dont hate me !

This seems alittle bit over done IMO. By nerfing all farming spots there might as well be no drops of items at all just gold or the collector stuff. As it is already obtaining enough currency for buying the pretty skined items cost an arm and a leg and unless they make the drop rates 300% better this big and drastic of a change would kill over making cash to exchange goods with other players (you think things that cost 20-100k+ expensive the prices for these times would almost tripple from a drastic change like this. An alternateive would be to slightly change mobs, rotate effects like what happened to the desert griffins, and maybe change the loot rate some what every now and again.

Also for the Rockshots, to a 55 health monk they won't be much of a threat. I say this becasue they could simply use mantra of Resolve and still make enough Energy back even if distracted.

Just what we need .............................. ANOTHER NERF FARMING THREAD!!!

Don't we have enough of this friggin crap cluttering up the boards?

Do we really need another thread ranting about it?

this is such a bad idea. All this will do is make it so the only character that has any value in this game is the warrior. If you make all high damage spells worthless then those characters will just not exist anymore.

You wouldn't say it is fair if every enemy in this game had empathy, cuz that would make warriors worthless for all but taking shots. cannot do taht

Sorry Juk3n you picked the wrong forums to post anti farming. Most of the people on here do it (excessively). As in when they play Guild Wars they really play Farm Wars spending their 3 or 4 (or however many) hours on the game farming various areas. Their excuse is when you have nothing left to do in the game it is the only left to do (despite the various repeatable guests). Oh but I forgot, doing the same quests over and over gets boring yet somehow killing the same mob(s) of enemies over and over again doesn't....

Just watch out for their massive ego saying things like "why not just nerf everything?", "my farming isn't bothering anyone" (despite anet themselves saying that exessive farming does in fact have a negetive impact on the economy), and one of my personal favorites mentioned here "without farming there wouldn't be good drops and prices would go up" (um anet said themselves that exessive farming is the cause of high prices and what you think that when an enemies sees a farmer he thinks 'oh a farmer, I have to drop the good stuff for him'). If what I have read in other forums is true about the frequency and quality of drops decreasing with the more people there are on at that moment farming the same group of enemies, then drops would become better to compensate for the drop in farming. Even if the price of rare weapons and the such did rise due to an increase in rarity, it would be short lived. Since the amount of gold brought in would significantly drop this would force people to lower the price they wish to sell that rare max weapon for since noone would have the money to buy it in the 100k+ range.

There is also the whole buy, sell, human nature and laziness thing that I have explained before when it comes to items like runes. In short no matter how you look at it prices would go down.

Another thread on these forums is about how the enemies don't drop enough gold and most people seem to agree. Maybe the problem isn't the amount of gold the enemies dropped but rather the price of things to buy being too high.

/signed
It's time to put an end to the farming.

If people can do it a little then they will do it alot. Anet doesn't mind a little farming to get that few grand so you can buy that rune or next set of armor and that is why they have repeatable quest areas. If cracking down on the excessive farming means cracking down on the casual need 1000 gold to get the next set of leggings kind of farming then so be it. I don't think it's some sort of coincidence that the FoW amor (most expensive in the game) is found in an area with repeatable quests accessable from a town that allows access to another repeatable ques area (UW).

A better way to "nerf" farming would be to simply give extra drops and gold for players who are in a party(or perhaps higher quality drops/more gold), as long as those party members are close enough to recieve exp from the monster killed.

The only reason we have "professional" farmers is because they sell in-game gold for actual money. The only way to stop them is if there is no longer enough money to support them for their expences, like new accounts, you will see no professional farmers. If they are forced to party up to farm, they'll loose per-account profit, and anet could simply ban more accounts at once, since you'll have multiple farmers running out to get the drop incentive, you can link the farming to more accounts, cutting the farmers actual profit, and driving up their prices on gold.

Now, the only fix you mentioned would really stop UW farming, there are 3 man ways to do SF without a SS necro, although I will say there are 2 man ways to do it with a SS(much slower than 3 man however). You can solo the avicara found around the troll cave with ease, as the mesmers don't have the required skills to stop a 55, infact from what I've seen avicara drop better items with more frequency than trolls, and they drop fellblades. Farming rockshot devourers is quite simple, with any 55 build or any non-55 build, I don't think there's any primary that with the right build/tactics can't solo farm rockshots with ease. You can never nerf the act of farming, people will always find another location. Unless you make every location unfarmable, and thus very diffucult for almost every group, there will always be farming. Heck, people can still go farm charr if everywhere else gets nerfed(nolani, flame temple corridor)...

Simple way to stop the abusive farming is to make it easier for people make money while at the same time making it harder for professional farmers. People who want to farm can still farm this way, but they just won't get as many drops or as good of drops if they go do somthing with actual people. After all almost everyone I know that farms quite a bit does it for money(used to be me too). Let them PvE the right way and make their money. This would even help PvP players, who don't love the slow grind of PvE, who simply want to be able to build their charactar for PvP and go PvP. I know when I was building my charactars for PvP I couldn't stand how boring it was running and farming over and over again to get money..

With this alternate suggestion, abusive farming is done away with, or at least severely reduced.

How about do away with the player driven economy and implement a fixed economy. With that replace the xp rewards in Fow and UW (since almost everyone that can go down there is lvl20 anyway) and replace them with money rewards. So those that haven't gone through the game and got ascended wouldn't be able to afford the top of the line items (any more than what happens now) the moment they get out of presearing. If anet is going to solve the problem with people excessively farming for gold and/or rare items and selling it on ebay for real money then they will have to take the value out of the ingame gold. If there wasn't a need for people to buy it then they wouldn't make any profit selling it.

Edit: Nice suggestion Zui.

I think smiting should be more towards PvP, rather then PvE.

Why don't we just give everyone unlimited gold to buy anything they want?

Problem solved ..... no more need to farm.

Anti-Farmers think that if Farmers can't farm they will play with them more often. The only PUG's I have ever joined have been for missions. If I'm going exploring into an area - all I need are the henchmen. They listen to me. You're not going to be able to force people to play with you!

You can't fix the economy by removing the main influx of wealth into the game.

If you 'nerf' it, Farmers will just tweak their builds and find a way to farm.

Selling items/gold on ebay is strictly against A-net's position on that subject. The way I see it - only totally inept individuals would ever spend real money for virtual wealth!

i think you want to get rid of chinese farmers because you dont like chinese people.

/signed to remove pve because it will lead to the end of these threads.

True

Might also lead to the end of GW. Need Pve and PvP people to keep it out of the red.

The only way to nerf farming completely is to friggin remove drops from the game. Otherwise people are always gonna find a way to grind out what they want for profit. That's the bottom line, period, end of story thanks for playing.

You anti-farming folk and you nerf this skill or that build folk constantly underestimate the ingenuity of your fellow players when it comes to ways to maximize their drops and farm what they want. I hate it when you people say " Make it impossible to solo." I'll find a way to solo if I want to solo and all you are doing is trying to force your idea of ,wait let me quote you on this one,
Yeah your idea of fun on me via developer fiat. I LIKE to SOLO. That to me is fun. I don't like feeling obligated to pick up henchies with abyssmal AI or PUG's that aren't much better. So you have fun. Grab your balanced groups and go venturing all you want but you do that without trying to get ANet to make us do that.

Yeah they do that already. Drops scale up for larger parties. the only reason solo farming gives the appearance of better drops is that the game still has to assign drops for certain monsters. The math is in place. There is only one person to give the drop to so there you go. It's common knowledge that drops are more plentiful the more people you have, the idea being that everyone will get something. As for rewarding people just for being in a group? That makes very little sense. Why should playing in a group earn you anything extra? It's not more difficult. " Aww you accepted a helping hand here's some more gold." Please. If anything more gold and drops should be given to those of us who figure out ways to take on the hard areas without any support.

I agree stop with the nerfing farm threads.

While I don't agree with the OP's specific proposals (which are too geared towards making specific builds useless), I support a general move towards making PvE monsters play more interestingly.

I personally think that they should all be given a full complement of 8 skills and two professions, taught about skill preconditions (no Final Thrust if your target is above 50% health, etc.), taught a little bit about shutdowns (no attacking through SS) and positioning (no standing so close that Barrage hits six targets), and, most importantly, some basic threat prioritization (if the target you're hitting is bonded, switch targets to the bonder, etc.).

Giving them semi-random skillbars wouldn't hurt either.

Realistically, I don't expect any of the above suggestions to be implemented, as it would scare away too many people. Not enough players in this game actually enjoy challenging themselves.

Nerf the nerf farming threads..

ATM thats a risk I am willing to take.

you obviously havent put any thought into the work that that would require

Who cares? If people want to farm for gold, let them. If you don't, don't. It doesn't affect the fact you can play the game you want it played, oblivious to the fact people are farming. Just move on.

It's starting to get up my nose the amount of calls from some to nerf this farm, nerf that skill, change this, change this, this is unfair. blah.

Another thread about stuff people don't want to hear about. Don't you know that everybody wants to be a farmer?! All Anet does is reduce drops, which sux on people who don't farm.

i love farm-nerf-sayers,some are to useless to make a build to do it them selfs,some can't find decent farm spots they can rampage,some can't get to grips with shared builds like the 55 monk build and most are to stupid to understand that the more something gets farmed the lower the price gets.ex,player 1 farms ecto and gets 10,so to do players 2 and 3,thats 3 people competing to sell there ecto at the same price.player 4 wants to buy ecto and notices that there are 3 sellers and so gets to pm'ing each to haggle there prices down.also the more ecto there is on the market the more people will sell it to the merchant and in doing so will slowly drop his price down aswell.another way to look at it is what is by far the most expensive item in the game,the crystalline sword,but why because it can't be farmed,once it could but a.net in there infinate wisdom decided to take the only pve location they could be found and leave it for ever crystalline-less thus ensuring they keep there ridiculus value that realisticly can only be afforded by e-bayers(like those who e-bay cash and ecto to buy a crystalline and then sell said sword on e-bay for profit.

I'm going to assume that "abusive farming" = solo or two-man farming.

The solution isn't targetted nerfing - as Augury Rock shows, that only leads to different forms of farming. The solution is more randomness. If the types of mobs and their placement vary every run, there can be no optimal farming build, and you don't necessarily know what the mobs will drop.

You gotta ask yourself, why are people farming in the first place?

-15k/FoW armor
-"wanna have" weapons/items

Anet has to maintain a balance between getting that stuff in a reasonable ammount of time, but not letting players get it too easy.

I myself farmed untill i got the stuff I wanted on my pve char. After that I stopped farming (I stopped playing pve totally and moved to pvp actually). But every now and then i solofarm FoW. Not for the loot, but simply because it's a lot of fun.

And that brings me to another reason why people farm. For many it's a lot of fun to do. The thrill of finding a cool item etc.

Threads about farming are very similair to pvp threads about playing certain builds. All I can say is, you can't force people to play the game in a way they don't want to play the game. If Anet would do that they would lose a lot of players.

Yes, farming has its negative effects, but don't forget the positive effects it has as well.

Then buy a single player game. This is an MMO the second M being multiplayer as in more than one player.
That is rather narrow minded. It's not as simple as the more there is the cheaper it is especially when it comes to items that can be found at a trader. Lets say the trader is selling ecto for 8k and buying from people for 6k. The 3 farmers will more than likely sell their ecto for around 7.5k and usually will do so successfully without anyone haggling their offer. The problem here is because they are selling it closer to the traders selling price and not the buying price people with the money (brought in from farming) will rather just buy from the trader than deal with other people. It save them time so that they can go back to farming sooner. The extra 500g is an exceptable loss. Although for ecto, with so many people selling, this isn't really a problem but for things like runes it is. At the same time those that are selling their ecto are doing so successfully to other people and not to the trader so from the traders point of view there are more people buying than selling. This is why the price of items at the trader can sometimes spike but when it does the people selling will just sell to the trader (since its offering more now) just to save time and get back to farming. This in turn brings the price down from the spike but no further. If the farmers were to sell all the stuff they find (that a trader somewhere is selling) to that trader so that others that actually want it to use would buy it from the trader, I believe that would be better than the current situation. You would get people complaining anyway.

As for if the farming would stop then yes initially the prices would climb but because less gold would be coming in the general wealth of the public would drop in time and therefore prices would have to as well (whether they do on their own or are reset by anet).

The way i see it, you'll always have farmers, with farmers you'll have people unhappy with the economy because of farming. So yes there will always be anti farming threads and pro farming threads. By flaming a persons topic if its pro or con turns the OP's topic into a flame fest nothing more. Same goes with people that want to post new skills. I think half the people on here enjoying fighting with one another then actually discussing what it being said.
/signed

According to Anet a small percentage of players have over 20K cash, and an even smaller percentage have over 100K, so it boils down to class warfare!

Those that don't have are complaining .... typical. Those that have and some that want say "leave us alone". Personally, I don't care. I have six characters with full 15K plus extra pieces, all the runes I need (obtained from farming ettins), more dye than I will ever use, all the weapons that I need and over 600K cash. More than enough for Factions and to pay for guild members Droks armor. The only reason I am in favor of continued farming is to allow others, who have the desire to work for it, to have the wealth that I have.

The arguments about whether or not it is good for the economy are futile, because in the end it is Anet that controls the economy and can make adjustments to change/control prices.

Argue on ..... I don't think it will cause Anet to make any changes to eliminate farming. They have (and will probably continue) made changes to make things a little more difficult. Case in point: other mobs have been added to North Kryta Province to increase the difficulty of ettin farming. Mergolye that slow you down, tengu wild that strip enchantments, and even some fire imps .... all popping up at random places. A little more difficult but not impossible. Also, the recent "nerf" of Prohet's Path to reduce griffon farming.

Farming/ anti farming, running/ anti running, PvE/ Pvp ...... all just people disagreeing, arguing and flaming. Very few (but very welcome) thought out responses. And, yes .... I too am guilty of getting emotional and "shooting from the hip" at times.

Peace

That wouldn't be challenging, that'd be a team of 8 people facing hundreds of PvP quality monsters... Simply out numbered, hell whats the point of even having skills if all the mobs will just counter them?

There are two elites in that cave, so they would have to be moved. That only moves the farming spot, so there really isn't a point. Plus has anyone actually gotten anything useful from these trolls?

NO. (under emphasized) the last thing I want to see is more of those little bastards, I see enough of them trying to get around the desert. I'm sure other people would agree.

No. They were added so that monks couldn't solo farm (goodbye enchants) and given so little hp that normal groups would barely notice them. No rend = more farming.

Spiteful spirit (and the gear/book/whatever tank) isn't a farming issue, it's an AI issue. Soon as mobs stop attacking when the reward isn't worth the risk (too much damage to friends vs their damage to you) and monsters stop attacking whoever is holding an item exclusively (yay! lets beat on the indestructable warrior!), then it won't be an issue any longer.

Guild wars is actually a CORPG, the first C standing for competitive. And it can be played as a single player game if people want, this is one of the reasons we have henchmen.

/Agree eleventy billion percent.

EDIT:

I distinctly remember Gaile saying the PvE should be just as challenging as PvP

Anything useful....uh....wood. Yeah, that's it! Oh, and minatour horns, with a little bit of running, huge payoff.

As for Sorrows Furnace:
By the looks of some areas, you NEED to devise clever strategies such as gear/keg tank. When you see a wall of monsters, which when you pull, they ALL come to you..........your party isn't going to survive no matter what. Maybe if you made it into a WoW instance when there's like 40 people on one side, but that's pretty much it. I mean, even in the Tombs,the warrior usually runs ahead and stops as many units possible from demolishing the rest of the party.

I mean, it's bad enough that they took out the elementalist fire nuke, but quite frankely, the more they nuke, the more clever strategies we have to come up with. And by the way you're saying it, all the monsters should all be glint level, and outnumber us by 10x, where no clever strategies will work at all.

As for running: I'll agree on one condition. You move ventari's sacrifice to a closer area. Otherwise, hell no. You know how long it takes to get that damn spell? And besides, the only thing that will happen is that you'll get more mission runners. And those really hard missions? Probably pay like getting a run through droks. Not much changes.

I fail to understand what the resistance is to areas in a multiplayer online game requiring a full complement of skills. The fact that you can follow some basic rote procedures to run one or two people through an area over and over is a sign that the area is improperly designed, IMHO. Mix up the strengths and weaknesses of the monsters so that it's very difficult to get through without taking a full party with a full range of skills.

Soloing later levels in a MMORPG should be difficult if not outright impossible. If it's not, then it's a plain old cakewalk for a full party (unless your party is comprised of drooling idiots), and they're probably not going to enjoy it anyway.

Regardless of what you think of farming and nerfing, the simple fact of the matter is that the game is specifically designed and marketed as a team-based RPG, and if you don't need a team to play it, something is wrong with it.

It is not a design flaw. Why does something have to be broken in order for people to overcome it easily? You vastly underestimate the ingenuity of the gaming community. They could make every monster in this game level 50 and people would still find ways to solo the content. Again I like to solo. I paid for the game. I should be able to play solo if I want without people like you trying to make me play your way via developer fiat. Regardless of how the game is marketed that does not mean that you can force your consumer base to conform to your marketing. I will always find a way to solo and if you don't like it then don't play with me. I'm not going to be picking up PUGs anyway so how am I hurting your play experience at all? All I ever here here is" This is broken or that needs to be nerfed". The only rationale given for these statements is that "Well Anet said it is supposed to be cooperative." What you are wanting to do is penalize the smart people who figured out how to get through the game without relying on horrible henchmen AI or sometimes even worse player intelligence. That is just wrong. You are penalizing those who excel or those who have figured out,"Well duh this way is easier than having to put up with players that don't listen or conform to strategy."

Actually this is a competitive online role playing game. Check the website it will tell you. As for why don't I go buy a single player game? By that rationale I should be able to tell you that if you don't like the way things work here then you should go play Everquest or something. It's just stupid and narrow minded to say something like that. I'll tell you why I don't go buy a single player game though. Single player games are scaled to one person. I can stomp through them in no time because I, unlike some people apparently, understand that the only challenge in a game like this is the metagame. I play this game solo because the difficulty is scaled for groups. That means it is more difficult to figure out effective solo builds and therefore more of a challenge.

You keep calling it "exceling" when it is, in fact, nothing more than exploitation of developer error. It's a multiplayer game. The game is meant to be playing with multiple players. If you can just stick something together to play by yourself, all that means is that they made a mistake somewhere by not creating the promised multiplayer experience.

Besides, solo players do hurt me, whether that includes you or not. Anymore you can't get crap for items anywhere outside of FoW and UW because of people exploiting this problem.

Like it or not, the simple fact is that the game has a certain mechanic that's not being exercised properly when you solo. You can whine and moan all you like, but it's not a solo game, so your complaints on the matter are completely irrelevant. If you don't want "horrible hencmen AI" or "even worse player intelligence" then go play something that doesn't have them as part of the design.

Furthermore, YOUR rationale is faulty here, not anybody else's. THEY are asking that the game be altered in a way that fits within its defined role. YOU are arguing that the defined role be ignored so you can continue to do what you're doing. People asking for specific pieces of the game to be fixed or altered are not the same thing as what you're doing: asking that the very basis of the game be altered so you can continue to play by yourself, which is beyond the point of the game.

You still won't force me to play with you!!!!

I like to play the game my way - within the confines and environment the developers have created.

If I have to - I will just go into Ascalon and solo that area. Everyone can farm there!

How do you figure it's a developer error? It is impossible to anticipate things like the advent of soloable builds. There is NOTHING wrong with the game. They set the rules of the game world. They set down how things will work. All that happened is the smart players figured out ways to work within the rules to do things that even some groups have difficulty with. Just because you don't understand the metagame does not mean it is broken. I'm not whining and moaning about anything. If anything it's all you "Nerf the Solo build" People that whine. I'm telling you I'll play the game my way because I paid for it and I have every right to play it my way so long as I do not violate the EULA. I don't think even ANet would be able to tell me I'm wrong in this. As for you not being able to get crap for items well that's not because of solo farmers man. That's because as a game matures people start to prioritize mods, skins and other things they want in a weapon and they also determine that they will pay a premium for these things. The fact that the prices have gone up can be attributed to the fact that people who have played through and gotten most of their dream gear now have nothing to do with their cash except let it accumulate. So there is simply more wealth floating around now than there was. Some of this is attributed to EBay and second party gold sellers but I think a lot of it is just people like me who don't have anything left to spend money on except really nice high end stuff. Your whole argument seems to be"Well umm Anet didn't mean for you to play that way." There is only so much PvE content and PvP does not appeal to me. So after I've finished the game I have to bring in my own content to keep it enjoyable. To me that is the metagame and soloing a game that is scaled for group play. Don't piss and moan because what I find challenging is somehow counter to the way you thin k the game should be played. The fact is no one is breaking any rules here. The EULA is not broken by soloing. The game is not broken because people figured out how to solo. The only arguments any of you seem to be able to give is that I should go play another game because Anet doesn't want me to play this one solo which has to be the weakest point I've ever seen made in support of a position. Just becaquse a game is multiplayer does not mean it has to be played in such a manner it simply means that it is suggested that you play it in that manner and that that was what they designed it for but not that you HAVE to do it. The day ANet issues a statement that says that you will no longer be able to leave town areas without a party is the day I agree with your points until then your position is baseless and unfounded. Thank you for playing.

Ok I take that back THIS is the weakest(edited out dumbest because it was an unfair personal attack) point I've ever seen anyone try to make.

I'm not asking that anything about the game be altered. If anything I'm saying leave it alone. I'm saying it is fine the way it is. What I want does not preclude people from playing the game in it's "defined role". Actually I want to expand upon that point. It is the developers that give a game it's "defined role". At least that is what I'm gathering from you. You said the game is designed to be multiplayer therefore it should be played as such. That means the developers set the "defined role" then yes? So if the developers wanted to set this in stone then wouldn't they have made it impossible to leave town without a party? Wouldn't they have already implemented these changes? If the developers did not want me to solo the game then they could have easily made it impossible by adding only one line of code that said IF party size is < 2 THEN disallow rezone to instanced area and display "You are unable to leave town without a party." I rest my case.

You're trying to mingle two different arguments here.

I am saying that in a game where the goal is to have a multiplayer experience, a single player easily going out and following a few cookie-cutter steps over and over is merely exploiting a design flaw. It reminds me of the old Contra game on SNES where you could max out your lives on the second screen of the first level by standing on one side of a car and taping down one button on the controller. Sure, you can do it, but you're not "exceling" at anything, you're just exploiting an oversight in the game's design.

I'm not saying you shouldn't be able to solo at all, I'm saying that if you can solo using cookie cutter methods like the 55 monk, there's a problem with the design. If you can consistenly solo farm high level areas dry, then there's a design problem. Areas in a multiplayer game should be designed for multiple players, and if they can be exploited by simply following a simple recipe, then they're not designed that way, so they should be redesigned.

I'm not saying they should be redone to stop people like you, I'm saying they should be redone because they aren't balanced to the standard of a multiplayer experience. The fact that such a change will almost certainly shut down your solo'ing is a side effect, and an inconsequential one since the game wasn't built to be single player.

I think the fact that Anet nerfs areas and monsters is evidence that they feel generally the same way. I think that the nerfing is usually the wrong approach though, and that the appropriate way to shut down obsessive farming is to fix the more fundamental problem: the fact that the area is imbalanced to be extraordinarily weak against one single set of 8 skills rather than balanced in a way that requires a moderate mix of various skills.

IMO let the farmers carry on as a lot like playing the game that way (although why people choose to play a multi-player game solo, rather than just stick with a solo game is beyond me) BUT give those of us that don't enjoy solo farming and prefer questing in groups an alternative to getting high-end stuff like making them quest rewards as well as random drops.

Eg. you want ecto for FoW armour you can either a) solo UW and get 1 or 2 in a 40 minute trip or b) go in UW in a balanced party, spend 2-4 hours doing quests and get a couple as a quest reward as well as drops (i say as well as drops to allow for the extra time doing quests take) - both segments get what they want then - although I expect the greedy and selfish won't like this idea as there will be an alternative to none-farmers getting what they want without having to pay high-prices.

Another idea is allocate things like shards/ecto's to every party member when 1 drops like quest items do. Eg. solo farmer gets 1, duo farmer's get 1 each, 5 man trappers get 1 each, full party of 8 get one each - then those that prefer soloing can, those that prefer questing with henchies can, those that prefer full groups can and no one gets penalished for their choice of gaming style.

One of the excuses farmers give is that rewards like FoW armour should be earned - well isn't having to do a quest 50+ times earning a reward just as much as grind farming?.

QFT! It would be so simple for the developers to implement that restriction. The fact that they haven't negates the entire argument against soloing.

Nuff said

The best "solution" to farming is to give monsters dual classes and a much larger battery of skills that they can spawn with. What you can do is make it so at best you'll need at least three or four man groups to be able to counter the varieties you may or may not find. That, and create a few new monster skills that do nasty things like, say, an Anti-CoP... removes one hex from monster, for all hexes removed foes in the area lose one enchantment and are dazed for 5 seconds. (Just an example...)

Now that's shaking it up.

I would have to say I too would like to see more interesting and difficult monsters. But I'd also like to see these threads stop